But then again, we use honey dressings on wounds sometimes which are bacteriocidal and promote healing enzymes, and a few decades ago we would have argued that was fake too.
Well, there's a difference between a homeopathic remedy and an herbal remedy. Many herbal claims are specious, but many herbal medications at least do something. Homeopathic stuff doesn't actually contain any active ingredients; it's literally nothing.
There can be some truth in "homeopathic" medicine though -- but it's weaved with a lot of lies.
I'm curious, what is this "truth"? The idea that water has memory? The supposition that "like cures like"? Oh wait, it must be the part where if you dilute something 10-12 in water, it increases it's effectiveness.
For instance, I remember telling one of my patients to not take coral calcium, and she argued with me for the better part of thirty minutes that she needed the calcium for her osteoarthritis. Fair enough, but lady, by the time you're taking the calcium, it's not going to help you anymore. In fact, most vitamin supplements don't show any marked improvement on people in the studies -- you're either too old when you start to use them, or the absorption just isn't there. And these things go in waves, like the recent 400% intake-of-vitamin-D-prevents-breast-cancer thing. That fell through really fast. But anyway, I argued coral calcium isn't regulated by the FDA and there can be a lot of harmful byproducts in the bottle, and the least she could do was to get calcium citrate instead of the coral. But she was slightly right about the calcium part. But then again, we use honey dressings on wounds sometimes which are bacteriocidal and promote healing enzymes, and a few decades ago we would have argued that was fake too.
I have no doubt that taking any sort of herb, vitamin, or mineral will have some sort of effect, but it has nothing to do with homeopathy.
I have no doubt that taking any sort of herb, vitamin, or mineral will have some sort of effect, but it has nothing to do with homeopathy.
It is true that there are many cases where an herb, vitamin, or mineral is medicinally useful. But even in these cases, it is stupid to use it in its original herb form.
For example, penicillin comes from a mold. You can eat the mold if you want, but you generally only do that in an emergency. Like, if you are trapped in a jungle, get sick, and the mold happens to be there. Instead, in medicine, we isolate and extract the active ingredient. You don't want the rest of the mold. It's either not useful, or could even be harmful. Once you have the active ingredient, you want to figure out and prescribe a very specific dosage. If you took the mold directly, precisely controlling the dosage becomes extremely difficult.
So even in cases where something like honey dressing on wounds is a good idea, it's clearly because of some ingredient, or combination thereof, in the honey. We shouldn't just go slapping honey on cuts and scrapes. We should actually figure out why the honey helps, and create a pure and precisely dosed and deliverable medicine for the sake of safety and effectiveness.
It is true that there are many cases where an herb, vitamin, or mineral is medicinally useful. But even in these cases, it is stupid to use it in its original herb form.
Even more so, in some cases - for example, we derive some types of heart medications (Cardiac glycosides, IIRC, sometimes used in the treatment of congestive heart failure and arrhythmia) from Digitalis - most commonly known as foxglove. Eating the plant in it's original herb form, probably going to kill you.
Only read this just now, but earlier this month Mark Geier got his medical license suspended in Maryland. If you are not familiar with Geier, he is one of the prime perveyors of the vaccine-autism scare, perhaps second only to Adrew Wakefield. He and his son David are misdiagnosing children on a regular basis and are advicing for some sort of treatment called Lupron therapy, which is basically close to chemical castration and it is used for not reason and no benefit to autistic children that could be scientifically evidenced. His son is basically also allowed to help his father treat patients despite having no medical degree whatsoever, only a bachelor's degree in biology. You can read more about those two assholes here and here.
The board review is quite scathing, deservedly so, and definitely should be read. The unfortunate thing is that Geier still holds licenses to practice in several other states, though those might be inclined to also revoke them due to this precedent.
I think the thing that gets me the most about these guys is also that they were going around basically randomly chelating kids because of this stupid belief that they have heavy metal poisoning causing their autism. I don't know a whole lot about it, but it's a rough treatment. From what I've been lead to believe, it's kinda like saying "Yeah, there's like a 1% chance you might have cancer, so we're going to go ahead and put you on some chemotherapy." It's basically useful because it has a slightly less chance of making your life suck than the poison coursing through your veins already.
There is this fake cancer treatment in Texas called "antineoplaston therapy" peddled by a guy named Stanislaw Burzynski. This treatment is not FDA approved and has not yielded any publishable or useful data. It seems to be administered in a series of "clinical trials" in Burzynski's clinic, and Burzynski is charging money though usually such trials are free to the patients.
Recently someone named Marc Stephens who seems to be affiliated with Burzynski's clinic has been posing as a lawyer and gone around threatening skeptic bloggers with libel and defamation lawsuits for blogs and twitter comments, some of those blogs being 10 years out of date and such. I guess when their methods are shit and their stuff doesn't work, you can always try threats.
Of course the bloggers are having none of it, and the thing seems to be blowing up in Stephens and Burzynski's faces. They should look up "Streissand effect".
At Thanksgiving, Adam's Aunt (who is an acupuncturist and holistic healer) told me that skin cancer isn't linked to sun exposure and that I should get more vitamin D via sun exposure in order to combat a re-occurrence of melanoma. She also said that women shouldn't get mammograms because it can burst tumors (which she seem to think will further spread cancer), that medical institutions don't want to cure cancer because "there is no profit in it," and that cancer is caused by a fungus (http://www.cancerisafungus.com/). I really like this woman, but biting my lip is getting more and more difficult.
At Thanksgiving, Adam's Aunt (who is an acupuncturist and holistic healer) told me that skin cancer isn't linked to sun exposure and that I should get more vitamin D via sun exposure in order to combat a re-occurrence of melanoma. She also said that women shouldn't get mammograms because it can burst tumors (which she seem to think will further spread cancer), that medical institutions don't want to cure cancer because "there is no profit in it," and that cancer is caused by a fungus (http://www.cancerisafungus.com/). I really like this woman, but biting my lip is getting more and more difficult.
You're a better person than me, kate, I'd have already either started a row or walked off before she had a chance to say even half of that.
I would say that you could tell her about oncogenes, the P53 tumor suppressor, and the role of apoptosis and runaway proliferation to detail exactly why cancer is not a fungus down to the molecular level, but you'd be wasting your breath, I think.
People are stupid. I managed to convince a class that I was teaching that polar bears can give you cancer. This was to prove that you shouldn't make assumptions. I had people coming up afterwards asking it was true or not.
I really like this woman, but biting my lip is getting more and more difficult.
So don't. She's dangerously wrong, and people are far more likely to listen to people they know than to the advice of medical experts. She is spreading potentially deadly misinformation.
But WuB is also right, in that it won't do any good.
I really like this woman, but biting my lip is getting more and more difficult.
So don't. She's dangerously wrong, and people are far more likely to listen to people they know than to the advice of medical experts. She is spreading potentially deadly misinformation.
But WuB is also right, in that it won't do any good.
Yea, it's wise to at least make skeptical comments to her even if you don't want to get into a big discussion.
I really like this woman, but biting my lip is getting more and more difficult.
So don't. She's dangerously wrong, and people are far more likely to listen to people they know than to the advice of medical experts. She is spreading potentially deadly misinformation. But WuB is also right, in that it won't do any good.
Yea, it's wise to at least make skeptical comments to her even if you don't want to get into a big discussion.
I listened politely and said "I will have to look into the peer reviewed material on that." However, when she suggested coffee enemas, I couldn't help but laugh. Trust me, I've pushed back a couple times (like when she first brought up the "benefits" of raw milk). However, with the tension with my mother-in-law, it is nice to have some of Adam's relatives that are nice to me, so I don't push it.
True facts...If you could get it out. Woe betide the motherfucker who tries that and leaves some behind.
I don't think that would be terribly common, tampons are not exactly built so that they fall apart when soaked in fluid.
Yeah, except the amount of alcohol needed for extreme intoxication by that route is rather small. Also, there's a difference between the indicated use of tampons and just straight soaking them in vodka till they're saturated. I'll agree with you, though; the pain brought on by that first instant would probably be too agonizing to bear.
EDIT: Wow, just googled it, and you're right, that shit is making the rounds (along with something called "butt-chugging"). Can't wait to hear the stories this slow news week is going to accidentally generate.
EDIT2: Stories of "Oh my god, it hurt so much, total hoax" not hospitalization stories. I'm with you that doing that would be more or less completely impossible.
Comments
For example, penicillin comes from a mold. You can eat the mold if you want, but you generally only do that in an emergency. Like, if you are trapped in a jungle, get sick, and the mold happens to be there. Instead, in medicine, we isolate and extract the active ingredient. You don't want the rest of the mold. It's either not useful, or could even be harmful. Once you have the active ingredient, you want to figure out and prescribe a very specific dosage. If you took the mold directly, precisely controlling the dosage becomes extremely difficult.
So even in cases where something like honey dressing on wounds is a good idea, it's clearly because of some ingredient, or combination thereof, in the honey. We shouldn't just go slapping honey on cuts and scrapes. We should actually figure out why the honey helps, and create a pure and precisely dosed and deliverable medicine for the sake of safety and effectiveness.
It seems to have primary utility as a topical agent, due to a combination of osmotic effect, acidity, and hydrogen peroxide activity.
So, sure, we could replicate that using non-honey materials, but if honey does the job and is readily available, why not use that?
I'm all about medical research and new drugs, but if something just works, there's often no compelling need to develop it any further.
The board review is quite scathing, deservedly so, and definitely should be read. The unfortunate thing is that Geier still holds licenses to practice in several other states, though those might be inclined to also revoke them due to this precedent.
Recently someone named Marc Stephens who seems to be affiliated with Burzynski's clinic has been posing as a lawyer and gone around threatening skeptic bloggers with libel and defamation lawsuits for blogs and twitter comments, some of those blogs being 10 years out of date and such. I guess when their methods are shit and their stuff doesn't work, you can always try threats.
Of course the bloggers are having none of it, and the thing seems to be blowing up in Stephens and Burzynski's faces. They should look up "Streissand effect".
I really like this woman, but biting my lip is getting more and more difficult.
But WuB is also right, in that it won't do any good.
Trust me, I've pushed back a couple times (like when she first brought up the "benefits" of raw milk). However, with the tension with my mother-in-law, it is nice to have some of Adam's relatives that are nice to me, so I don't push it.
My only consolation is the immediate and extreme punishment provided to those who are stupid enough to try it.
Goddamn. That's a complex of symptoms I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
EDIT: Wow, just googled it, and you're right, that shit is making the rounds (along with something called "butt-chugging"). Can't wait to hear the stories this slow news week is going to accidentally generate.
EDIT2: Stories of "Oh my god, it hurt so much, total hoax" not hospitalization stories. I'm with you that doing that would be more or less completely impossible.